Current Project:
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Portraying Success Among URM Engineering Majors,
NSF Grant No. 0431642,01/01/05-12/31/07

Abstract: The University of Oklahoma (OU) attracts a substantial population of students from under-represented minority (URM) populations, including an unusually high proportion of Native American students (7%). As is common across the country, OU as a whole, and the College of Engineering (COE) in particular, have achieved differential levels of success in graduating students from these populations. This project will study these patterns, focusing on the questions (1) What systemic factors contribute to the success of URM students in engineering at large, predominantly white universities? and (2) What systemic factors contribute to differential success between URM populations? An external advisory board will inform the collection and analysis of data, as well as the interpretation and dissemination of results.

Intellectual Merit: Given the context, this research is building on and expanding prior research in very specific ways. First, research and interventions have routinely either focused on only one population or addressed URMs as a unit without taking into account differential needs and perspectives among the populations. Second, much of the scholarship related to URM participation in STEM fields has focused on factors related to loss from the pipeline. However, although engineering graduation rates are not as high as desired, OU has achieved atypical levels of success with URM populations. Thus, this group is in an unusual position both to disaggregate similarities and differences among populations and to identify factors related to success as well as those systemic factors that need improvement. A student's opportunities, options, and choices are affected by a complex web of factors. We have sorted our target factors into the following overlapping categories: (1) race/ethnicity; (2) attributes of engineering as a field; (3) student's background; (4) attributes of academic communities; (5) attributes of personal support structures and responsibilities; (6) attributes of student communities; and (7) student's future. In addition to examining patterns in quantitative data, qualitative data will be longitudinal and open-ended from interviews with students, faculty, advisors, and program directors, as well as observations of student group activities and student communities. These open-ended data allow investigation of the student experience in a holistic way, guided by factor categories distilled from the literature and the expertise of the research team.

This team has experience with this model from work related to a grant from the NSF Research on Gender in Science and Engineering program. Broader Impacts: This proposal is submitted through the OU-based K20+ Center for Educational and Community Renewal. The team is multidisciplinary (e.g., engineering, education, STEM education research, and African and African-American studies) and systemic (e.g., personnel include the Director of Engineering Education ). The research is contributing to the knowledge about increasing URM persistence in STEM undergraduate majors and will inform intervention efforts and future research directions. We will disseminate to faculty, administrators, policy makers, and parents by way of sessions and workshops at conferences, journal articles, campus-wide teaching seminars and other instructional development initiatives, the K20+ Center network, and appropriate websites.

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Former Project:
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PGE/RES: Why Does It Work? A Study of Successful Gender Equity
in Industrial Engineering at the University of Oklahoma,
NSF Grant No. 0225228, 01/01/03-12/31/05

Abstract: The University of Oklahoma (OU) will study the factors that impact the retention of female undergraduate majors in its Industrial Engineering program. The program is especially successful: as of Fall 2001, 58% of the undergraduate majors in Industrial Engineering are women. This proportion is strikingly higher than both the nationwide proportion in industrial engineering and the proportion in other STEM degree programs at OU. Furthermore, the proportion has more than doubled in the space of five years, having steadily increased from 27% in 1996. OU did not set out specifically to accomplish this rate of retention of female students. The study will investigate combinations of factors that affect students' choices. For example, one factor is the proportion of female faculty. Industrial Engineering at OU has a high proportion of women faculty (4 of 10 faculty, 40%), which is one of the factors identified by Seymour and Hewitt (1997) as having an impact on retention of women majors. This phenomenon alone is unlikely to account for the present high retention, as evidenced by nationwide trends in other disciplines (e.g., chemical engineering and computer science).

The primary source of data will be 600 interviews with students. Students will be sophomore to senior, as well as alumni. During the first year, the team will interview only Industrial Engineering majors at OU. In the second and third years, they will interview students at OU majoring in Aerospace & Mechanical Engineering, Chemical Engineering, Computer Science, Mathematics, and Physics, in addition. Finally, during the third year, they will include additional interviews of Industrial Engineering majors at Arizona State University, the University of Nebraska at Lincoln, and the University of Pittsburgh. To assure triangulation, other sources of data will include student transcript records, the Pittsburgh Engineering Attitudes Toward Engineering Survey(copyright), and interviews with faculty, program directors, advisors, and graduate students, all of whom affect student experiences in college.

The fifteen-person research team consists of two anthropologists, two educational researchers, two faculty in industrial engineering at OU (one with expertise in engineering education research), one faculty liaison for each of the other participating departments at OU (one with expertise in undergraduate mathematics education research), one faculty liaison with each of the participating institutions, and an experienced project director.